7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful - The Right Thing at the Right Time, June 25, 2003
This review is from: Homosexuality in French History and Culture (Paperback)
On the cultural front, the French and we don't understand each other too well. Their nation has the gall to pick which wars it gets involved in, which American pop celebrities to lionize (Jerry Lewis?), and which supposedly marginalized groups to treat in a matter-of-fact fashion. Professor Henry Higgins' snide remark "The French don't care what you DO, actually, as long as you pronounce it properly," hints at a tolerance for today's more value-free environment in previously "controversial" areas of ground-breaking historical and cultural research.
Not to imply that the Fifth Republic is Nirvana for free speech, but at least Over There learned people can address a topic like homosexuality without first having to dash over the hot coals of bigotry and obfuscation so regularly, and dismayingly, laid down by self-appointed pundits, journalists, and other critics dispatched by the knee-jerk radical right.
That last, no-holds-barred quality is what makes possible HOMOSEXUALITY IN FRENCH CULTURE, a compendium of readable, even entertaining articles that focus on a particular kind of gay or lesbian community at particular times during the French historical experience. All the way from France's early nationhood to the present. Does this mean that the populace was way cool about homosex in the eighteenth and nineteenth Centuries? No, of course not. But the concept of a citizen's duty versus a private life sticks better in France than here.
French (homo)sexual life is enough like ours to be a mirror, and enough unlike ours to be a window. Many of this situations dealt with here have to do with accommodating what we would call sexual hypocrisy--but it's the Monty Python, "Wink, wink, say no more" type of hypocrisy. For example, Parisian male prostitutes of the late 19th Century had no recourse to health screening. Their desire: neither decriminalization nor unionization, but a plea for the same kind of semi-legal recognition (including mandatory doctor visits) that their distaff pros enjoyed! Probably the tipping point between labeling this approach "cynical" or "pragmatic" lies somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Not out and proud, but at least a demand for equal rights and rough justice.
The articles in this book are well-written in layman-friendly. At this point it's safe to say that the book was first written as an academic journal before the publisher realized its commercial potential. Except for the concluding article, which uses deconstructionist literary theory and along with it, that tedious, jargon-filled prose associated with the discipline, there is next to nothing of the schoolhouse about HOMOSEXUALITY IN FRENCH HISTORY AND CULTURE. A highly recommended book, if just to ask, "How would the USA have handled that problem? Would we have seen it as a problem? How have different cultures acknowledged (or ignored) their gayness?"
PS: James Baldwin's later biographical writings give poignance to the difference in American and French sociocultural perspectives. In the 1950s, this celebrated author was viewed in New York City as a "Negro" and treated badly if at all in Manhattan's best hotel, but in Paris he was a respected cultural figure: a civilized nation does not treat an artist poorly...
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